Erlang/OTP 27 end of life
Erlang/OTP 27 reaches end of life on 20 May 2027. It is currently the oldest OTP release still receiving security patches, and the only supported runtime for a wide band of RabbitMQ 4.x releases — so its end-of-life date is effectively a deadline for those brokers as well.
What now
Which vendors provide Erlang/OTP 27 security patches after 20 May 2027?
Patched RabbitMQ 3.x Builds with SBOM and VEX Attestation- End of life
- 20 May 2027
- Released
- May 2024
- Final release
- 27.3.4.19 (latest to date)
- Successor
- OTP 28 or OTP 29
Date published by Erlang/OTP release policy, cross-checked against endoflife.date. We do not publish a lifecycle date we cannot source.
Last reviewed
Erlang/OTP versions: release and end-of-life dates
| Version | Released | End of life | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Erlang/OTP 27 (this page) | 17 May 2024 | 20 May 2027 | Approaching |
| Erlang/OTP 26 | 15 May 2023 | 26 May 2026 | End of life |
| Erlang/OTP 25 | 17 May 2022 | 17 May 2025 | End of life |
| Erlang/OTP 24 | 10 May 2021 | 10 May 2024 | End of life |
End-of-life dates are published by each project and checked against endoflife.date.
What actually stops on 20 May 2027
- Security patches for the OTP 27 branch, including TLS, SSH, public_key and crypto
- Any further 27.x releases
- The last supported runtime for RabbitMQ releases whose maximum Erlang version is 27.x
What actually breaks in the upgrade
This date matters more than the OTP 26 one did
When OTP 26 went end of life, RabbitMQ 4.x users could move to 27. When 27 goes, any broker release capped at Erlang 27.x has nowhere to go without a broker upgrade as well. RabbitMQ's own compatibility matrix caps a large band of 4.x releases at 27.x — check yours before May 2027, not after.
Plan the pair, not the runtime
The runtime and the broker move together or not at all. The practical sequence is: confirm which RabbitMQ release you will be on in mid-2027, confirm that release supports OTP 28 or 29, and schedule both as one change.
Your options, costed honestly
Including the ones that do not involve buying anything from us.
| Option | What it is | Effort | Cost | Our view |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Move to OTP 28 or 29 | OTP 28 is supported to 20 May 2028 and OTP 29 to 11 May 2029. | Coordinated with a broker release that supports 28.x or 29.x | Engineering time | The destination. RabbitMQ lists Erlang 29 support from 4.4.0 and 4.3.7, and 28.x as the maximum for 4.3.6 only. |
| OSSeva extended support | Patched OTP 27 builds past the date. | Drop-in | Per cluster | Keeps the current broker/runtime pair patched if the broker cannot move in time. |
What OSSeva does for Erlang/OTP 27
OSSeva patches this line
OSSeva will ship patched OTP 27 builds from the end-of-life date, paired with the RabbitMQ releases that depend on it.
Erlang/OTP extended support
Erlang/OTP extended support What your auditor will say
Requires that system components are protected from known vulnerabilities by installing applicable security patches. A release line with no upstream patch stream cannot meet this by itself, whatever the scanner reports.
Vulnerability identification and remediation. Scanning satisfies identification. Remediation is what fails when the fix does not exist for the line you run.
When does Erlang/OTP 27 reach end of life?
20 May 2027. It was released on 17 May 2024, and the Erlang/OTP team maintains each major release for roughly three years.
Which RabbitMQ versions depend on OTP 27?
RabbitMQ's compatibility matrix lists Erlang 27.x as the maximum supported version for a wide band of 4.x releases. Only the most recent 4.x releases support 28.x, and Erlang 29 support starts with RabbitMQ 4.3.7 and 4.4.0. The authoritative table is RabbitMQ's 'Erlang Version Requirements' page.
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